Tuesday Tidbits

BFE Sweepstakes is coming to a close.  If you don't know about it you are not paying attention.  Look on past Tuesday blog entries to find out about the free book giveaway! Or email me at bfereporter@yahoo.com for details.

Winner or winners will be announced next week.  

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Adventures in Babysitting

One of my favorite lines is in Zulu when Sergeant-Major Bourke utters the stoic British upper-lip remark, "Steady lads" as thousands of pissed off Zulus line up for attack. 

I use that line with my clients at Papa's Daycare when they start to flip out or any number of things that get the quiet in a disturbance.  I do the whole routine, puffed out chest, chin tucked in with proper English solemnity and unruffleness.  Do you know what the oldest one has started doing?   That unruly miscreant has started to mimic me.  She'll see that glower in my eye that means I'm about to settle things down and she'll stand there, chest out, chin in and mutter "Steady, lads."      

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One of my favorite (and oldest) jokes ever.  

A sadist and a masochist are walking down the street.  

The sadist says to the masochist, "Hit me."

The masochist says, "No."

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I'm no Colin Kaepernick fan, but...

I like how he exercises his rights as an American to be free and yet when he chooses a freedom we don't like we take his job away and trash him.  Full on Ox-Bow, America.

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Here is an Emerald City firefighter using tanker truck to water the trees of the firehouse, full emergency lights flashing.  

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Found my first penny in Northlandia this trip on Thursday.  

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My friend in Knoxville, Pat, filmed this deer feeding outside her home.  And that reminds me I love deer burgers.

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I don't know if they have these anywhere else in the U.S. but it seems to be a singularly small town Midwestern thing.  This is a grab-your-own honor system roadside veggie stand.  A box is there for you to pay.  No one is around to assist.  Note the "Mushmelon" spelling. 

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The Charlottesville incident this weekend is proof positive that bigotry prejudice and hate is a cancer on the American soul.  We have made progress in the courts but maybe not so much for many everyday people.  

Donald Trump's father never rented any of his apartments to black people, and it looks like his son learned that lesson well, too.  The President can strip the State Department and the EPA in his quest to 'deconstruct' Washington D.C. per Bannon's nationalist manifesto.  He can embarrass our country with the world and bully like a 12 year old.  These are the spoils of political victory.  But when he cannot bring himself to denounce white supremacists, neo-Nazi's and the KKK, this is why I will never be able to support him.  Consider me fully in the resistance movement.  I tried, I really did try (not very hard, tho) to put aside my doubts and skepticism thinking he could grow into the job.  But you can't ignore the deficiencies.  A not-so-bright bullying racist in bed with the Russians.  We're #1!  We're fucked.

P.S.  Hey The Donald - if you come out against hate groups three days after a hate crime, and then only because of national uproar, that doesn't make you a leader, it makes you a sniveling racist who watches the news.

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Who cares?

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Another typical Kitschland driver.

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Saw this last week at Tarpon Springs.  Think about it.

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Finally, I leave for one week.  One measly week.  Not even that, really.  And what has happened in the lovely heat box that is Kitschland?  My Norah has obtained a cat.  Yes, a felinus obnoximus.  

 First, the sheer audacity of it all.  While I am away and unable to provide my omniscient truths and reasoning, they go and get a cat.  Don't come running to me when Alfred can't catch her breath because this thing is sucking it away.  Don't look at me when they start developing rashes, allergies and emotional phobias.  Coming down with the flu or cold?  Don't look at me, you're the ones that got it.  You, and I refer to the female majority of this clan, have provided no less than another circle of Hell.  And it is a Hell that  lives forever, it seems.  Somehow, I suspect we'll (present author excluded) be searching for someone to care for the damnable thing while we (again, count me out) traipse to Texas to attend the wedding of Norah and some cattle baron's son after meeting each other over a Facebook sub-group video page showing cats either falling off sofas or trying to get on them.  Funny funny stuff.  My sides are hurting but then the cattle baron's dad promises to send me 20 ribeye steaks for being the patriarch of the family, and my laughter turns to joy.  But I digress.       

Miss Norah does look happy, though, doesn't she?  And I applaud any effort to make her the happiest little girl in Kitschland.  But did it have to be a cat?  What's wrong with turtles?